It was a few minutes after the Detroit Tigers' 3-2 win over the Oakland Athletics Thursday. Anderson was surrounded by microphones, cameras and reporters. The victory was No. 2,000 for the white-haired manager.

Anderson picked up the phone, said "Hello," and listened a few seconds.

"Yes. Hello, Bill," he said.

As it turned out, it wasn't the President calling. The wrong Bill. There are lots of Bills, after all.

But there is only one Sparky.

Anderson is the only manager to win more than 800 games with two teams. He's the only manager to currently lead two franchises in all-time wins. He tops Cincinnati with 863 and Detroit with 1,137.

No other manager has posted 100-win seasons in each league, playoff sweeps in each league, and a World Series title in each league.

And now, he's just the seventh manager in history to win 2,000 games.

"I know one thing," Anderson said after the phone call. "If I drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, my grabdchildren will always know I won 2,000."

Anderson didn't make a big show of the victory in the dugout. And that was something of a surprise, because the Tigers had to rally for two runs in the ninth off A's relief ace Dennis Eckersley.

But Anderson let hic emotions show afterward.

"I thought I'd be more emotional when I catch Durocher," Anderson said. "I didn't think 2,000 would matter much. But you never know about emotions. This one got me more, because now I'm in that group."

The group above him includes Leo Durocher, Walter Alston, Joe McCarthy, Bucky Harris, John McGraw and Connie Mack. Anderson likely will pass Durocher and Alston this season, taking the No. 5 spot on the list of baseball's winningest managers.

Durocher finished with 2,010 wins, Alston with 2,040. Mack, who heads the list with 3,776 wins, likely will never be topped. But that doesn't seem to bother Anderson.

"To me, John McGraw is the guy," he said. "I don't even count Mack. You can't own the team and manage two or three innings a game.

"His last 15 or 20 years, he really didn't do much. If they were losing in the second or third inning, they got the elevator ready, because they knew he'd be coming."

Anderson has never bailed out when things got tough. And there have been plenty of hard times since that first victory with the Reds, a 5-1 win over Montreal on April 6, 1970.

He loves the battles, the ebb and flow of baseball. It is, in fact, the very force that draws him to the game.

He learned this was so shortly before coming to the Tigers in 1979. The Reds had fired him for the sin of winning 92 games in 1978, but finishing second.

"I remember when I was going to Los Angeles Dodgers games as a fan," he said. "I went home and told my wife (Carol), 'I don't enjoy this.' If you don't have the pain in the pit of your stomach, you're not in baseball.

"I've tasted how it feels to see that ball going up the gap for a double. That's why you never see me going out there and doing those high-5s. Because I know how it feels when it's going up the gap against me.

"In here, in the privacy of my office, I feel good. But I'll never show it. That's for the players."

So he is a man doing what he loves. Yet the 59-year-old native of Bridgewater, S.D., also admits there's not much else he's qualified to do. So it's lucky he fell into managing, and great that he's good at it.

"I even enjoyed managing in the minors," he said. "I've never kidded myself. This is what I can do. I still enjoy it. That's the part that makes you a baseball manager."

AP photo NO. 2,000: Sparky Anderson munches peanuts as he watches his Detroit Tigers beat Oakland, 3-2, for his 2,000th victory as a major league manager.

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